Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 144 - Monte Melkonian Part 2: Most Wanted

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

Monte joins the Armenian Secret Army and sets off on an international mission of "armed propaganda" Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and still with me today is Sarah from It Came From the Sea. What up? I haven't passed out yet. We're doing okay. Yeah, we are forcing ourselves to do what Nick and I did through our Khmer Rouge series and record this back-to-back. Though, I have to say, this is much more enjoyable. As much as I like to study uh genocides for my you know uh future grad school and you know for

my show uh forcing other people to be sad about them is kind of hard uh it is much easier to talk about this which is part two of the monty malconian series that was not a good transition no that was fantastic you're doing great uh so yeah if you wanted to start at part two, I'm not here to stop you. It's your choice. But go back and listen to part one. So it makes sense. A weird choice.

It's a very weird choice. Well, that actually happened once. I forget what series. I think it was like fucking Iran, Iraq or Afghan Soviet, which is like they're like seven parts long. I started listening at part three and I have questions like I assure you have already answered. Bold move. I started listening at part three and I have questions like, I assure you have already answered them. Bold move. Yeah.

I mean, I respect it. I won't help you, but I respect it. Yeah. So when we left you last week, our little revolutionary who could finally got his first mission from the secret army quest line of this incredibly bad RPG metaphor metaphor that i'm using um this is why i script i did not script that and it's terrible uh so uh he was ordered uh mati melconi was ordered by uh

tagushian to turn in his passport to grab a new fake one which i assume must have been much easier um yeah i don't know like about passport technology or whatever but these guys go through so many fake passports i don't like i know it depends on the country of origin for the passport too because some passports have more like security features embedded in them i'm going to assume though that um his lebanese passport must have been on like a piece of like loose paper because takushian seems like kind of a dumbass to be able to make false passports though actually i think he probably got it from the plo if i'm gonna be completely honest anyway uh my spy with a little help from his friend yeah yeah like i said trickle down revolution Anyway, Monty got a passport and traveled to Athens, Greece, and he was given the very detailed orders to simply gun down the first Turkish target he could find. What?

Yep. Yep. Okay. Not great. Not great. Detailed orders, I'll say. Now, Monty flew there and found out that it was kind of hard to just find a Turkish diplomat wandering around. So he spent a week pacing around in front of the embassy and never saw any targets come up.

So he actually traveled back to meet with Takushi and be like, yo, I can't find anything. Like, you need to give me more. Like, give me more direction on this shit. So Takushi told him just to throw a grenade at the Turkish airline office and call it a day. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. They're half-assing a terrorism. Now, what's funny is that

Monty refused. He thought that would be sloppy, but also because you can't telegraph who a grenade's gonna kill or hurt. And he wasn't super worried about civilians, but he did believe in actually killing people who mattered, not the guys who work at the

office at the airline. So he instead grabbed a handgun and waited outside the turkish embassy until he saw he thought until he thought he saw someone important pull up in a car now he assumed it was important because it had diplomatic plates and decided that was good enough um now i also assume that tur that Turkish embassy security was pretty lax because he was just waiting outside for hours. And he'd been like this super sus looking dude's been like just scoping out the embassy for weeks at this point. Like if anybody. Yeah. Like if anybody could point out like an Armenian terrorist, it should be the Turkish embassy.

You'd think. Because this has been happening all over Europe. Like shit like this has been happening all over Europe. Like, shit like this has been happening. But he walked up to the car with a pistol and began to open fire. He hit the driver

and passenger and then opened fire into the back seats. Now, before he could figure out that if he killed or even wounded his targets, a group of people,

including one of the wounded men from inside the car, started chasing him, causing him to flee from the scene through the streets in broad daylight. Yeah. What did you expect to happen? It's like the most Greek thing ever is like there was a crime on your block. So everybody gets that starts chasing them.

Are we going to go beat this guy up? Like if anybody should know how Greeks are going to react, it should be an Armenian. We get confused for one another all the time. Now, Mati managed to escape and discover the next day that the people he had shot, one of the people he shot,

was something that was considered a legitimate target. He was an administrative attache to the Turkish government, and it was insisted that he was a member of Turkish intelligence known as MIT. He was killed immediately. Unfortunately for the rest of the people in the car, they were

not. They included the man's family, all of whom were wounded, and his 14-year-old daughter later died of his wounds. And the person who chased him down was actually the man's wounded son, who's, I think, 16. Now, Monty explained this away in various ways. He claimed he didn't want to leave witnesses, for one, which is dumb, because... It was the middle of the day.

Yeah, look at... In the middle of a street. Look at the rest of the hit. Yeah, what? of the day in the middle of a street. Look at the rest of the hit. Yeah, what? He also said that what happened happened

because the windows in the car were tinted. It was their fault for having tinted windows and if they didn't have tinted windows, he would have been able to tell if there were children in the backseat. Did you see the way that car was dressed? Now, these are all

from the cuff that Monty kind of explained to Markar why he defended what he did but a few years later he acknowledged what he did was an indefensible crime he did say the attache was a legitimate target but the targeting

and shooting of civilians is unforgivable so he matured though it's not like he turned himself into the police or anything But the targeting and shooting of civilians is unforgivable. So he matured. It's not like he turned himself into the police or anything. Yeah. Admittedly, turning himself into the Turkish police would have been a death sentence for Monty. Bad idea. I don't blame him for that. Yeah.

Monty returned to Lebanon and continued training in Palestinian camps. By this point, the camps had swelled to thousands as Syrians and Armenians fled Hafez al-Assad's brutal crackdowns in next-door Syria. There's a huge population, or at least there was a huge population of Armenians in Syria, mostly survivors of the genocide who were marched there to their death. And they were also joined by tons of PKK members

who Monty became quick friends with finally letting go of his hatred for kurds um and like he actually uh was pretty enamored by their ideology at the time and he like daydreamed about returning to turkey with them which he never did um he was uh sent on another operation into europe, this time to Geneva, Switzerland, where Monty and another secret army member, Alec Ohanian, not the guy who helped make Reddit. Same last name. Oh, that would make Reddit way cooler if the founder was an Armenian revolutionary. Instead, he's just a shitty billionaire. revolutionary uh instead he's just a shitty billionaire um they their job was to assemble bombs and send them to two places in milan which exploded and nobody was hurt a third bomb went off

while alec was building it blowing off his hand in most of his face oh um now this happened when monty was away uh and uh alec survived but was arrested was arrested for the bomb. Yeah. Now, months before, Alec and Monty had made a pact that if one of them was arrested, the other would have to bust them out of jail or at least do their best to do so. So while it's not 100% sure that this was Monty, you can assume that Monty had something to do with it. A spat of bombing attacks began against Swiss targets in Lebanon, as well as in Europe. At least 18 more bombs went off across the

continent, most likely for Monty and the secret army. While we can't pinpoint this exactly on Monty, it was almost certainly the secret army. They targeted Swiss embassies and businesses, and 20 people were wounded but somehow none were killed um that's that's my favorite kind of terrorism yeah uh alec was not

charged for building a bomb that blew off his face and was kind of like exiled from switzerland to like just get the fuck out of here and stop bobbing us that seems very fair yeah i guess i don't know probably not gonna be building that many more bombs if he's missing a hand and yeah he's at this point he's blinded as well oh yeah yeah um now during this time takushi had turned into an authoritarian as well as an alcoholic leading to a falling out between him and monty monty was never much of a drinker and kind of hated people like that uh and the two were pretty much ready to kill one another and what stopped it was israel invading lebanon uh so soon monty was running alongside his comrades in the palace

various palestinian groups and uh fighting the israeli invasion uh now monty was actually very good at math and like he almost majored in math in college and he managed to use this skill in calling and rocket and artillery strikes on israeli soldiers oh no at one point he destroyed two tanks so monty killed like a dozen fucking people anytime you're in a math class and you're like man what am i ever gonna fucking use this yeah you never know you could do a revolution um now after around 10 days of fighting israel pulled back this taught monty a lesson he wouldn't soon forget a determined defender could ward off attacks from a vastly superior enemy and escape alive it didn't necessarily have to be a suicide attack once the war was over monty was put in charge of training and planning a commando mission

but not going on it himself something he he would actually say that he regretted. That's because the mission that he helped train and plan was the Turkish consulate attack in Paris. So with the exception of a small exchange of gunfire, which occurred at the very beginning of the confrontation where a Turkish guard pulled a weapon on the raiders or the terrorists, whatever. He was shot

and killed. The guard also shot and wounded one of the attackers as well. The takeover went off without a hitch and it was pretty uneventful. Though in the crossfire, one of the Turkish consulate employees was wounded and the Armenians actually rendered first aid

and were very nice to him to the point that like, he kind of said that they were like, I understand what they're doing and it's fine. I don't blame them afterwards. The most successful terrorism. Yeah. After 15 hours, they surrendered to French authorities

and were quickly sent off to prison, you know, for all the terrorism yeah now remember they they did a terrorist attack on an embassy which ended in a man dying they were sentenced to seven years in prison

worth it because the 1980s is a much different time none of these people ever leave fucking jail alive at the if this happens now. No. What, what was the goal?

What, what was the end game of taking everything? Cause they did it, right? Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah.

It was at this point it's, um, it's a Turkish consulate. So they're attacking what they consider a valid target, um, in drumming up support for what this is. The, the French government forcing Turkey to, uh to admit that they committed the genocide.

Oh, okay. That's such a like... It's weird. It's just such a like, it shouldn't be that hard. Obviously it is because it still hasn't happened. Right. Just say you did the thing that we all know that you did. That's all anybody wants at this point.

And France becomes a target time and time again because the armenian diaspora is rather large there like there's a reason why my grandpa fled there to join the legion um and they're considered quite politically powerful so like courting their opinion could force the french government to do something in in my opinion doing violence in france probably isn't the way to win French people to your side. Yeah. But I'm not a revolutionary. I'm a podcaster. So what do I know?

I mean, that kind of thing happened in France all the time just because of their old colonial ties to like North Africa. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like the Algerians had so many bombs off in the metropole. Oh, yeah. And you know what? I'm fine with that. Maybe don't colonialize Africa. Now, Monty considered this attack the secret army's peak and a huge victory,

which he regretted not being a part of, though he did plan and train for it. During the next mission, he was sent to France again to shoot a Turkish diplomat. But Takushin, now keenly aware of how much Mani hated him, issued him a very underpowered handgun. Now, it was like a .22, I think. What? Was he supposed to get up within five feet

and shoot him through the eyeball? I mean,.22s were used actually pretty effectively by those Israeli death squads we talked about in the last episode. Yeah, but they were trained for years as death squads yeah those they were seasoned and massated special forces uh guys also uh they knew the reason why they they used the 22 they used a specially changed 22 cartridge with actually less powder in it because it made less noise oh yeah yeah and they would but they all kill somebody with a 22 you just have

to be very specific about where you hit them yeah their plan was to literally point blank them and manis was not because he's ambushing people um and also since mani's little shooting spree in athens along with all the other terror attacks against turkish targets the turkish cars all had armored glass now so like he was given a gun that would literally never work. But were they still tinted? I assume so. Yes. Probably.

So also like Takushin did this. Monty knew about it and he was a dumbass and tried anyway. Now. Nevertheless. Nevertheless, he persisted. I hate and love that so much. God damn it. So he attempted to ambush a Turkish diplomat in an armored car with a.22 pistol.

And it ended with him getting shot in the arm. And he obviously was not able to wound his target. This left his target being able to see his face clear as day and a new bolt hole in his arm. Now, in order to escape France, he had to travel on another forged passport. A forged passport furnished to him by Takushian. So when he tried to use it, he ended up getting caught.

What a dick move. Yeah, and then to make matters worse, when he was brought into jail, they strip searched him and they found a fresh gunshot wound in his arm. He just fell down some stairs. Yeah, the same place

that a Turkish guard said that he had shot an attacker and escaped. It's just a coincidence. So now Monty is kind of caught red-handed. And Monty knew he was fucked. And he knew that like, oh fuck, they're gonna put two and two together.

They're gonna bring this guard in to like finger me as the guy who shot at him. I need to change how I look fast. How did he shave his beard? So I'm glad that you caught on to that part. Apparently, jails in France back then,

like when they gave you food, they would still give you like a metal knife, but it was dull. Oh. So he sharpened the knife on the wall of his jail cell and shaved with it. Ah. Now, this worked. the knife on the wall of his jail cell and shaved with it. No.

This worked. The guy could not ID Monty, but it's also because at that point he probably looked like a human being with fucking mange. He just cut his face all up. Yeah, he cut his face all up and left a horrible patchy mess.

Are there pictures? No, there's not uh i wish okay um so fuck that though and then after another string of bombing against french targets this time the french course the french courts officially exiled him from france and did not give him a jail sentence just i love the like traveling on a forged passport at the minimum just get the fuck out it's weird how common of a sentence that was for people doing terrorism in the 70s and 80s

just get the fuck out of here it's not the same but like I knew people in the military that were just so much of a fucking handful but even though they could have like they could have gone to court martial they could have gone to like NJP instead they were just told like look we'll admin sep you. Yeah.

Just fucking leave. Just leave. Now, here's another thing. Remember, he is on a forged passport, right? So they know that his real name isn't on the passport, but he managed to hide his real name from the French and gave them a different fake name. One that they actually bought.

This is a problem because when he was deported to Lebanon, Takushian bragged to the Lebanese authorities and press that Monty Melkonian had escaped France and returned, making his real name public and quickly landing him

on just about every international terror watch list you You can imagine. Not to think that was on purpose or just because he's a fucking idiot. I think it was on purpose because what happens after this is like, nobody really cares about these guys except the Turks. And that puts Monty Melconian squarely within the crosshairs of the Turkish intelligence services who were probably rightly rumored to have their own counter-terror death squad

that would act the same way as the secret army, carrying out bombing and assassinations against people like them. Oh, certainly. So he probably did this on purpose. He could have just killed them, you know? Would have been easier than just setting them up to fail all the time.

Yeah, especially because it doesn't end up working. Yeah. Now, as... And Monty was suspicious of the same thing. Once again, leading to them to be on the verge of killing each other again. And then, once again, Israel invaded Lebanon. It's weird how that happens so often.

Classic. It's a classic move. Thankfully, that would never happen again. Or continues to happen occasionally. Now, this time it was a much bigger Israeli force. And this is the one that leave the occupying forces behind for quite some time. This, again, forced Montina's comrades to go off and fight. Though they were quickly overpowered. Montina's comrades to go off and fight,

though they were quickly overpowered. And they decided that the plan would be to suck the Israelis into fighting them into Lebanon, a very large city, and it's horrible to defend, or sorry, to attack with a determined defender. So they actually had to march 27 hours back to the city. Oh, fuck.

Under constant Israeli airstrikes and artillery and stuff like that. Now, after this, the Israelis laid siege to a city, cutting off water, electricity, and food, commonly known as a war crime, before launching a saturation bombing campaign against the people within, commonly known as a war crime. No. I'm shocked. Shocked, I say. Now, Monti and the small secret army fought alongside the PLO and the workers' lead formations once Israeli soldiers pushed into the city. While this was happening, Takushin executed a new recruit into the secret army, claimed

it was him, and then ran from the city, faking his own death. What? Oh my god. I just gotta fuck this up out of here. Monty fought in the city until August when a deal was cut for the fighters, PLO and others, were allowed to retreat into Syria. After

their withdrawals, Israel and their allies, the Phalangists, moved into the city where these formations were defending and massacred over a thousand innocent civilians. An Israeli investigation into this massacre at Sabra and Shatila found that the Israeli

defense minister and future prime minister Ariel Sharon were completely and totally responsible for them. We investigated ourselves and found ourselves innocent. What's actually incredible is they investigated themselves and found themselves at guilt and then just did nothing about it. Which is even worse. It's also an option.

Yeah. Yeah. And also, if you remember our Lord of War episode, which I continually bring up, this is who Nicolas Cage gave weapons to. Cool. Yeah. Neat. Not great. give weapons to now uh yeah neat uh not great as monty tried to figure out what to do next he drifted further and further away from the secret army uh because remember the secret army kind of disintegrated uh as as a cohesive force and uh again you know takushi and faked his own death

um and then you know the secret army continued but it was now led by more of like a mafia with takushin as a godfather um most of the the revolutionary veterans had been around some time had either bailed been killed in the fighting or joined one of the other groups and they're replaced by younger kids who instead of um you know being ordered to armed propaganda they were like robbing people at gunpoint which is like the natural evolution of these groups as they disintegrate this happens all the time uh like it happened to the like the real ira it happened to like uh it happened to various groups in columbia they all pretty much eventually lose their footing and then devolved into a little more than a gang um it's weird how that happens i don't really understand it i think it's like once uh you uh

in a situation like this i think it's takushkin was always kind of an idiot that didn't know what he was doing um i think in other groups that's just what happens when you know they get decapitated so many times and lose leadership that other dumber people fill the hole yeah and you're like you lose your leadership and then you don't have your focus and you're still trying to keep shit together. It's kind of focusing on survival, but you're focusing on survival of some artificial group. And correction, I said

real IRA, I meant provisional IRA. There's a lot of them. Moving on. Now, this is also the same time. Remember, Mani is slowly moving away from the concept of just Turks in general being

legitimate targets it's obviously slower than it should be but he found he was under the idea that like if say you attack the Turkish airlines and in doing that you know a Turkish government entity you kill some civilians it's regrettable,

but it's okay. Obviously, I don't agree with that. I'm just speaking for Monty. But attacks to kill civilians for a civilian's sake, which I would argue is in fact attacking the airline, are wrong and you should not do them. and at the same time there was a bombing at a french airport which killed quite a few people and a bombing in a turkish market that also killed quite a few people that um were almost certainly the secret army monty had nothing to do with and found they were fucking horrible and disgusting um and during this time takushin began to lose his mind uh he started to get very paranoid, throwing wild accusations against everyone from random secret army recruits to Yasser Arafat and the PLO for being traitors and in control of this entire vast conspiracy that went up to the highest levels of the PLO. He blamed on Monty, which is very weird. Because, I mean, there is some rumors

that Yasser Arafat, Monty did meet. There's no way Yasser Arafat has any idea who the fuck Monty Melkonian is. Sure. They may have met.

He's got other shit going on. Yeah, he's a lot of other shit going on. Yeah. Now, paranoia or not, Monty actually was plotting to kill him. Though still without much help

and certainly without the help of the fucking PLO. And instead of the vast network, Monty actually was plotting to kill him. Though still without much help and certainly without the help of the fucking PLO. And instead of the vast network, Monty used old connections and moved through Europe, working with agents of the PKK, as well as the Basque separatist movement, the ETA. Despite being exiled from France, that's exactly where he ended up, under a fake American passport,

under the name of Jack Daniels. passport under the name of jack daniels yeah like was jose cuervo taken um now um it didn't take long for the french intelligence services to find him again um this was made much easier by the fact that like the french were keeping an eye on him and they knew that his then-girlfriend and future wife, Seta, who was living in France, they were keeping an eye on her and phone-tapping her shit. So when he called her,

like, hey, I'm in France. Like, oh, goddammit. Yeah, so they quickly tracked him down, arrested him, and they searched where he was staying uh finding the address of several turkish diplomats as well as weapons and explosives um though his brother makes the argument um that monty was never one for building bombs despite the fact he had done that uh he was like like, whenever he did things like that, he generally shot people. But, yeah, he was probably plotting gun attacks,

not bomb attacks, but he did have traces of explosives. He wasn't, like, he didn't have, like, a Timothy McVeigh stockpile of fertilizer or anything like that. Now, Monty and his fellow revolutionaries are tossed right back into the same prison that he had just been released from.

Do you have to shave his beard with a dull knife again. No, he kind of figured he was screwed this time, though he was hoping that he would get a slap on the wrist like last time. But unfortunately, time had conspired against him while he was in prison. A series of bombs went off in Paris. Now, this is not the work of the secret army because mostly Takushi wanted money dead

and he definitely isn't going to go set off bombs to defend him. But it sounded like it could have been, which is all it needed. The French authorities were like, look, this is what they fucking do. It is what they have done in the past yeah exactly uh and a newspaper demanded justice for a quote middle eastern

terrorists fun fact we're not middle eastern not East. Yeah. I get how you could be confused by the beards and also your racism. But like, come on. Also not checking at all. Yeah. We're still now at this point, Mari had no valid passport for any nation on Earth. Yeah. Because remember, he turned his real passport in to Kuchian back in Lebanon

when he joined the secret army at that point most of Lebanon most of Beirut had been bombed by Israeli jets destroying his passport this meant that no matter what his sentence was no nation would take him when the French released him

and the US refused to issue him a new passport due to the copious amounts of arrest warrants out for him. All the terrorism, you know? Yeah. Thankfully for Monty, at least, the French courts couldn't prove a whole lot since this was still the 1980s. Terms for terrorists were pretty light. Like, the most they got was, like, an illegal handgun, which he claimed he needed for self-defense.

Which, kind of true, but mostly because of all the terrorism. Call me, call me. Somehow, they could not prove that Monty was planning to kill anyone, despite the fact he had a step-by-step plan of how to kill people. Yeah, and a bunch of addresses for people he'd like to kill. Yes. And they had to throw out the explosive charge. Instead, he was found guilty of having a legal handgun,

having a forged passport, and a legal entry and sentenced to 40 years in prison. In the United States, you would get more time right now for having just an illegal handgun. Oh, yeah. Now, while in prison, Monty was a bit of an agitator, routinely sparking hunger strikes and organizing his fellow prisoners

into non-violently resisting the guards. What? Which is pretty rad. Yeah. He pretty much unionized the inmates. Yeah. Dope. They fought over better food, better sleep arrangements,

and things like that. And then when his partner Seta visited him in prison, it caused a national uproar in France to the point that Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the national front, the French Nazis, I believe, I believe it's not the father of the former French Nazi presidential

campaign. Yeah, I believe she's still in charge. It has changed the name. They're not the National Front anymore. I forget what they call themselves now. They're Nazis. Fuck them.

Nazis rebranded. Yeah. He penned a front page article condemning how soft Francois Mitterand's government had become. Because Le Pen is so racist, they hate other white people. Kind of funny. They were just mad that his wife got to see him at all yeah and despite the fact that while monty was planning terrorist attacks he was plotting to kill people that jean marie le pen almost certainly hated as well which is turks just beyond that like he's in there for four years

like anybody who's in prison for four years is allowed to have visitors right apparently not if you do certain crimes uh i don't know i don't know why it caused such an uproar because i think it's mostly because monty was being blamed for the bomb attacks that he had nothing he was in prison he had nothing to do with them that killed a lot of french people um and like oh he was clearly in on it despite the fact he's in prison now uh while he was in prison he heard that takushin had been assassinated this time for real while staying in athens um now to this day nobody is entirely sure who did it because he is one of those people that pissed off so many different groups. It could have been literally anybody.

He was like walking out of his house in Athens and just got shot a whole bunch of times. It could have been the fucking KGB again, for all I know. Now, unfortunately for Monty and for Armenia, it was the late 1980s. And the signs of the Soviet Union was falling apart could no longer be ignored now this is the part where we have to talk about the region of Karabakh otherwise known as Artsakh sometimes known as Nagoro Karabakh and legally known as the Mountainous Karabakh

depending on what time period we're talking about Mountainous Karabakh sounds like a wrestling person like a wrestling character yeah yeah he's he's a jobber he just like keeps getting in the middle ground um and i have to point out i can't do a full history of armenia or art sock here so i will make it short and to the point the best i, and as very biased as I possibly can. You're allowed. I mean, you tuned in knowing what I was getting into. Now, Artsakh had been ethnically Armenian since the time of Alexander the Great, when the concept of Armenian culture and ethnicity was a thing.

It had controlled itself and come under the control of Armenia at various points since the beginning of written history. Then, after the Armenian Genocide and World War I, the Armenian and Turkish War began as Armenians fought for their survival and the First Republic of Armenia was formed. Then the Soviets came in,

cut a deal with the Turks, and threatened a two-front war against the Armenians, forcing their absorption of the Soviet Union or face a two-fronted genocide. Weird how that continues to happen between the soviet union and fascists now under soviet control mountainous scarabac as it was now called uh and other states became subject to what is known as sovietization this operated uh hundreds of years of history culture and beliefs without any input from locals. This included things like the forced abduction of the Cyrillic alphabet and the Russian language, but also the redrawing of borders. There's also a very small period where the Armenian church was outlawed, but that quickly came back when they realized that Armenians would start shooting at them.

originally Artsakh was meant to fall under the control of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic which had historically more than anyone else controlled and administered the region in some form or another but that is when the Minister of Nationalities a fun you want to bet who you want to take a wild guess at who that minister was no I got nothing but it's not going to be good. Joseph Stalin! Ah, well, that. Changed his

predecessor's plan. So Joseph Stalin ended up becoming the Minister of Nationalities after somebody else came up with a previous plan to give to Armenia. Stalin came in and changed his plan, instead giving Artsakh to the Azeri Soviet Socialist Republic to administer, despite the fact that Artsakh was the Azeri Soviet Socialist Republic to administer, despite the fact

that Artsakh was 94% Armenian. Why? Nobody's entirely sure, and there's a lot of arguments why this happened. So I can only take guesses, slightly educated guesses. Now, what seems likely

is this is another extended form of Sovietization when a key part of sovietization is destroying the caucus republic's drive for nationalism and togetherness in order to do this separating historical artsak from other armenia is a very good way to split them in half right uh and it also allowed them to flex on these quite honestly, ancient cultures, the sovereignty and power of the Soviet Union and their new governance. Like, don't fuck with us. Look what we just did. Right. Yeah. I mean, if they just did it to be like purely antagonistic, it makes that is the general belief through our uh armenian uh history because it's uh stalin didn't exactly leave a lot of notes yeah that's also stalin too so like you don't have to make sense right like sometimes the cruelty is the point um yeah now most people like to frame the soviet during its peak as problematic, but at least peaceful.

Some of these places have been at war for centuries, and that was not the case. Rolled my eyes so hard that it hurt. I had to say it. Now, all that war was avoided during this time, mostly because the threat of the Red Army coming through and steamrolling them. But it was common for the Azeris to displace Armenians within Artsakh in an effort to change the overall demographics in the area. This is generally considered an era of ethnic cleansing. As the Soviet Union began to weaken, ethnic tensions rose throughout the Soviet Union, but in particular, this region. Artsakh petitioned to be allowed to join

the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. While the Azeri Soviet Socialist Republic protested, both of them invoking different parts of the Soviet Constitution to do so. I mean, the Constitution is pretty wrong in the first place. Yeah. This eventually erupted into violence and pogroms.

In the Azeri town of Sumgayit in 1988 gangs of Azeri civilians with homemade weapons stalked the city found its Armenian population and began to ruthlessly murder them in their homes and in the street in an orgy of violence that went on for a week Soviet police and military units

stationed only a mile nearby did nothing to stop it when they did finally move in several days later, the Soviet authorities were surprised to see themselves under attack as well. The massacre was finally stopped when Soviet tanks and troops were flooded into the city.

And not to stop the violence per se, they were more worried about like Azeri nationalism. And they were forced to evacuate any surviving Armenians out of the city. They were more worried about like Azeri nationalism. Um, and they all, they were forced to evacuate any surviving Armenians out of the city. Uh, in the end,

the Soviet union says around 32 people were killed, but the more realistic number is north of 300. This immediately became linked, uh, to the Armenian genocide within the consciousness of the Armenian people. Once again, a Turkic nation was murdering Armenians on the street and nobody was stopping them, including powers that said that they would stop them.

This is repeated again. The Soviet Union in this region. Yes. It's always incredible to me. I think I've said this before on the show that actually the Tsar did more for the Armenian people than any Soviet leader.

That's a low fucking bar. Now, The Tsar did more for the Armenian people than any Soviet leader. Yeah. That's a low fucking bar. Now, this is all repeated again in the 1990s in the Azeri capital of Baku. When tens of thousands of Armenians are forced from their homes and hundreds are killed in the street, women were systematically raped and children were beaten against trees until they were dead. Like some guy at Soviet police and soldiers did nothing to stop it. When the Soviets finally did enter the city, it wasn't to stop the violence,

but rather to stop the popular front of Azerbaijan, a nationalist group from seizing power and kicking out the Soviet leaders. While all of this was happening, Monty had been finally released from prison and managed to escape his parole once again to get back into the Middle East. released from prison and managed to escape his parole once again to get back into the middle east because it seems like at this point parole and exile is more of a suggestion than a rule now in order to escape an american arrest warrant his partner said i had managed to make contact with levon ter petrosian now petrosian was an Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic politician and

was actually a non-communist leader of a Soviet Socialist Republic, which was interesting. He'd also end up becoming incredibly corrupt later on, but he had become very

anti-Soviet during their non-intervention in the anti-Armenian pogroms. He had also eventually become the president of the Republic of Armenia. Bonte was traveling under a fake passport again and had no hope of entering into the USSR. That was unless invite. He was invited under his fake passport by a member of the Soviet government. So that's what Terpetrosian did.

Oh, all right. I, which i feel like has to be illegal in some way right like yeah yeah i know it's fake i don't give a shit yeah it's fine fuck it whatever i mean it's the early 90s in the soviet union nobody's checking on this shit yeah the main government has some other shit they gotta deal with yeah with that monty finally stepped foot in the armenian motherland for the first time. And was immediately greeted by the KGB. Oh, fuck.

Now, right after that, this is... The KGB thing is interesting because they just kind of, like, were friendly with him and followed him around. I think they were mostly just curious about the armenia the armenian american terrorists that just came invited by the government yeah yeah i mean there's a lot to like set off your alarm bells yeah yeah i mean if the kgb didn't exist the local cops definitely would have greeted them there too sure right after that ter petrosian became head of the armenian supreme soviet which is the head of the local government and began to to make plans for Armenian independence. The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic became the Republic of Armenia, while at the same time, the Azeri Soviet Socialist Republic became the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Originally, Matti was very pro-Soviet, but after watching them botch the response of the programs and seeing the absolute corruption of Soviet power within Armenia, he decided the Soviets did not care about the safety and well-being of the Armenian people. And the only people who ever would would be the Armenians, which goes back on... Yeah. It speaks to

an Armenian traditional saying is we are our mountains, because nobody gives a fuck except Armenians. Yeah. Now, Monty, like everybody else, knew a war was brewing in Artsakh, and at least over Artsakh, and largely hoped that the Soviet Union

would be able to stop it. But the USSR was dead and everything but name only, and he saw no peaceful resolution as possible. Now, at this point, he began something of a self-education on military matters um like his family sent him uh old american uh military manuals to read like you know tactics and stuff and there happened to be tons of old soviet ones laying around that he could read has he still been like contacting his his like super bland american parents oh yeah he's been in contact

with his brother mostly um not because of like a shame that his parents felt but he was worried because his brother i'm not i'm not talking about his brother so the story isn't about him but um his brother is just as revolutionary as he is okay uh he just doesn't see like he sees himself as less as a leader like he was fighting in Lebanon as well oh okay yeah so like his brother isn't it isn't attaching himself to terror attacks so he's not finding himself on watch list so he can bounce

back back and forth as much as he wants and he ends up being something is like the pipeline into the regular world yeah so like his brother is acting as an intermediary for his family to connect with him uh so during this time he's you know educating himself about military matters uh because remember the most military military training he had is like in plo camps right um

now with that amount of education he decided to uh he asked permission so at this time there's no like armenian ministry of Defense so that it would eventually be made he there's something like the effectively a volunteers department because they have no military right so he asked for permission to create

his own volunteer detachment known as a Chokot to serve in the defense of Artsakh and his request was granted mostly because Armenia didn't have much of a choice at the time. They're like, sure, fuck it. And that's when he started going by what he is now known as, Commander Avo. Now, Commander was just as what he was called.

He didn't give himself that title, but he called himself Avo. It doesn't mean anything bigger. He just thought it was a short name that would be very easily said over the radio. Yeah. Okay. By now, a war between

Armenia and Azerbaijan had begun to simmer. It was something of a frozen conflict. They were shooting at each other, but there was no offensives quite yet. It was only really being held in check by the skeleton of the soviet union but only barely monty was demanding to go to the front in art sock with his detachment and the armenian government was worried about setting him due to

the fact that the soviet union had not completely fallen apart yet right and they had internal ministry troops uh who were managing um roadblocks and checkpoints. The last... He doesn't seem like he's going to hold back. Well, he was worried. Now, legitimately, the Armenian government was worried what the optics would look like if this guy was arrested by the Soviet internal ministry and had countless arrest warrants for terrorism.

It would make their entire movement look bad. Yeah, it would delegitimize a lot of it. Yeah, so it would make their new budding republic look bad. And admittedly, the Azeris were already saying shit like this, like, our media is bringing in terrorists, which is fucking ironic. Yeah, considering. Which we will talk about later.

So he was held back. And to me, there wasn't a lot of internal ministry soldiers out there. Considering. Which we will talk about later. So he was held back. And to me, there wasn't a lot of internal ministry soldiers out there. There's like the last vestiges of Soviet power in the region. Now, at this point, so during all of Soviet history, Artsakh was considered an autonomous region of Azerbaijan.

Though that was violated pretty routinely, especially with the ethnic cleansing um but azerbaijan rescinded the autonomous status of art sock uh so like it was like another like step in the direction of armenians like oh fuck another genocide's coming um and then both soldiers deployed uh both sides the soviets and the Azeris, began to deploy soldiers in that direction. In the Azeri capital of Baku, politicians openly talked about expelling all Armenians from Artsakh. The Azeri Popular Front printed maps with all of Armenia wiped from the earth and replaced with something called Greater Azerbaijan, which historically is not a thing.

I don't like that. And furthermore, Azerbaijan is the creation of the Soviet Union for the most part. It's not a historical entity in any form. Now, just as the tensions were building, the Soviet Union officially gave up on the Caucasus region. While the Union would technically survive until December of 91, in September

all internal ministry troops were withdrawn from the region and the red flag of the Soviet Union came down for the last time over Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh. Then, the local government of Artsakh formally seceded from Azerbaijan, arguing that

since the Azeris could do the same thing to the Soviet Union, so could they to Azerbaijan, which fair. Yeah. Ter Petrosian, now the president of independent Armenia, knew that he was in no position to recognize the new mini republic next door because it would mean

going to war against Azerbaijan. Though everyone, Azerbaijan included, knew that the new Armenian Ministry of Defense was supplying the new republic with everything that they had, which is largely true and still is. Yeah, well. One of the things

they were supplying them with was detachments of volunteers, like the one led by Commander Ava, who stepped on a helicopter to be transported to Artsakh. And that is where we'll pick up and conclude next week. He did it. He finally found a war.

He finally not only found a war, he found his way to do a war in Greater Armenia. Yeah. He's really grown up a lot. Yeah. Our boy has evolved. So, you're now two hours in to hearing Monty's life story. grown up a lot yeah our boy has evolved so you know two hours into hearing

Monty's life story how do you feel about him now better a little bit better yeah this seems like he he's kind of figured like he's kind of figuring himself out in a weird way this episode is definitely one of growth like yeah you could see him being like

the wild revolutionary at the like just chomping at the bit to go do violence in somebody's name and then like him realizing by doing that violence honestly that like this is bad um yeah like even if at this point he hasn't realized like that it's not okay to target civilians even if they're turkish right at least realize that like he can't just go around wildly committing violence and hoping that it works right um and it's also like the next episode it goes into a little bit more when he starts realizing that um there's no difference between us uh the difference is our governments um which is kind of what you know most people i know i can't say most armenians because it's not true

but most people i know is the arguments that they have is like obviously we're not racist we hate the turkish government for what they do they're fascists and they're war crimes apologists and hating a government doesn't like doesn't mean you have to hate the people. No, you should hate your government. Yeah, yes. That came up with a, and I'm not sure who it was, but there was one of the military leaders in the most recent war, and Ardsock came on.

He did an interview where he corrected somebody. He said that, like, no, my beef isn't with the azeri people it's with the government of azerbaijan don't don't conflate these two things yeah and it's honestly quite surprising because like um and we'll talk a little bit more about next episode but like the militaries in the area are quite fluid um obviously the art sock defense army is the thing that exists it did not exist in any real corporeal form in the 90s it was like you showed up in camouflage adidas track pants and an ak welcome to the resistance bro um yeah now it's obviously much different and uh you know now you know sitting in 2021 it's even

more different um but uh yeah it's it's very it's i hate when uh especially um like members of the diaspora will conflate that this is like some kind of race war to the death and it's absolutely not um no it's sure it's a fight for survival but like at the same time like you know israel didn't invade germany like right you know like i consider like it's exactly the same things that's a fight for survival and while azerbaijan and turkey are are very nationalist and i consider them a threat to armenians it's because the government yeah 100 like people are going to be people and while some have their own individual politics that are problematic right the problem is the problem is the body politic led by a government

who is attempting to use war to change things at home like um uh before this war started uh the there was protests against the leader of azer Aliyev or whatever his last name is, because he's corrupt and unpopular. And like there was problem, there's like high unemployment. Then suddenly a war happened. Right. Weird how that continues to occur.

Yeah. And, you know, he's using that as a leverage. It's, you know, he's, and I mean, and we'll talk about it next episode. There's absolutely valid historical grievances that Aesirius can have against Armenians Armenians committed war crimes in this war and we will talk about

them I'm not gonna fucking gloss over that shit so like there there's historical grievances that could be leveraged to whip people up into a blood frenzy and both sides um and we'll get there but you know that's part three fun stuff sounds great yeah it's great and we'll get there. But that's part three. Fun stuff. Sounds great.

Yeah, it's great. Sarah, thanks for joining me yet again for the second hour of this lovely series. Everybody, thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next week.